Age is not anything but a number.
Former Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl champion coach Pete Carroll has agreed to become the next head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders on Friday, according to CBS Sports NFL insider Jonathan Jones. Carroll will be inking a three-year deal with a fourth-year team option with the Raiders, ESPN reports.
Carroll turns 74 years-of-age on September 15, but do not worry ‘Raider Nation’, he has the energy of a 54-year-old. He spent the 2024 campaign as an advisor with the Seahawks after mutually agreeing to step down following 14 seasons as the team’s coach from 2010-2023. Carroll will be the oldest head coach in NFL history when he leads the Raiders at the age of 74 in 2025.
Before being replaced by Mike Macdonald in 2024, Carroll led the Seahawks to 10 postseason berths in 14 seasons including the franchise’s lone Super Bowl victory in the 2013 season over Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. He led Seattle to back-to-back Super Bowl appearances in 2013 and 2014, but he lost the second of the two Super Bowls to in controversial fashion to current Raiders minority owner Tom Brady and the New England Patriots when quarterback Russell Wilson threw a goal-line interception instead of running the ball with Marshawn Lynch.
The Seahawks’ 137-89-1 record under Carroll’s leadership from 2010-2013 was the sixth best in the NFL in that period of time, and Carroll’s 137 wins rank as the most by a head coach in Seattle history. With the Raiders looking to snap their three-year postseason drought, Las Vegas is bringing on a historic winner in Carroll: He is one of three head coaches to win both a college football national title and a Super Bowl as a head coach along with Pro Football Hall of Famer Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer.
Carroll will now compete in an AFC West division stacked with top tier coaching and quarterbacks, as he will face Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs, Jim Harbaugh’s Los Angeles Chargers and Sean Payton’s Denver Broncos. The AFC West was one of two divisions to send three teams to the postseason in 2024 along with the NFC North. Carroll will certainly have his work cut out for him rebuilding a roster still in search of its next franchise quarterback after Derek Carr’s departure. In 2024, the Raiders used three different starting quarterbacks, Aidan O’Connell, Gardner Minshew and Desmond Ridder, and none of them panned out, throwing less than 10 touchdowns nor winning more than three games.
The Raiders at least have a bright spot go-to, No. 1 option in the passing game in tight end Brock Bowers. He set the NFL rookie receptions record in 2024 with 112 catches, a figure that also broke the Raiders’ single-season catches record. Bowers is the only rookie to hold his current team’s franchise record for catches in a season, according to CBS Sports Research.
Embed from Getty ImagesLas Vegas does have plenty of resources to rebuild their roster in Carroll’s image. The Raiders have $184.3 million currently tied up in their active roster for 2025, which is the lowest in the NFL. That is why they will have the second-most effective cap space in the 2025 offseason ($85.8 million, according to OverTheCap.com), the most effective cap space in the NFL in the 2026 offseason ($157.97 million, according to OverTheCap.com) and the fourth-most effective cap space in the NFL in the 2027 offseason ($230.45 million, according to OverTheCap.com).
The Raiders also have an extra third-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, thanks to the trade of Davante Adams to the New York Jets, on top of already possessing the draft’s sixth overall pick due to their 4-13 record in 2024.
It is time for the rebuild to get started now that Brady’s bunch has both its head coach in Carroll and general manager John Spytek in the building.
